Government urged to thwart conspiracy of shifting post office

DIBRUGARH, Feb 16: The postal service in the region has touched its nadir in the absence of a Post Master General (PMG) and Director of Postal Service (DPS) for more than a year. The attempt is now being made to shift the PMG office from Dibrugarh to Guwahati.The office of the Post Master General created in 1990 was shifted from Guwahati to Dibrugarh in April 2001 in order to monitor the postal services in the region. The office controls the postal network of Dibrugarh region covering an area of 14 districts and 2 autonomous councils of Asom besides Railway Mail Service (RMS) to the states of Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.As the office works are now being controlled from Guwahati due to lack senior officials, the all-round postal service has deteriorated to its lowest level. The Chief Post Master General and Director Postal Services (HQ) hardly take trip to Dibrugarh or other areas of the region to take stock of the situation. It is alleged that due to absence of a Postmaster General in the Dibrugarh Office, the administrative works delayed causing immense hardship to the public as well as members of staff as all the related papers are required to be sent to Guwahati which take sufficient time.Though the Postal Directorate, New Delhi had issued an order to post one PMG at Dibrugarh nearly four months back but the person concerned is yet to oblige the Postal Directorate’s order and join the post.It is alleged that the Chief PMG Guwahati had shown interest to shift the office of PMG from Dibrugarh and accordingly he is curtailing the staff strength by withdrawing and abolishing a number of posts of the Dibrugarh region.The people of the region urged upon the State Government and Dibrugarh MP to intervene into the matter and thwart the conspiracy of shifting PMG’s office from Dibrugarh.

Seminar on journalism at OIL golden jubilee celebration

DIBRUGARH, Feb 16: The tragedy of present day journalism is that we have failed to create a discerning readership. There is a lack of radical thinking which is necessary to make an impact on society. Professor Emeritus Amaresh Dutta said this in his inaugural speech during the seminar on ‘journalistic ethics and its implementation’ held at Dibrugarh today. The programme is part of the concluding functions of the OIL golden jubilee celebrations. Axom Xahitya Xabha president Dr Nagen Saikia moderated the seminar which was attended by BBC’s bureau chief for East and Northeast India Subir Bhaumik and noted journalist Wasbir Hussain as resource persons. Dutta went on to talk about the challenges faced by print media and the adverse influence of electronic media on it. He said that newspapers had a tremendous responsibility to play in society. Wasbir Hussain dwelt on the basics of good journalism like credibility, accountability and professionalism. He brought up the ethical issues the media have to take into consideration while covering news. In his speech, Subir Bhaumik emphasized that journalistic ethics was good investment and made good business sense. He stated that journalists derived their power from the trust of readers and only maintaining high standard of ethics could win them the credibility. The BBC’s bureau chief for East and Northeast India stressed on the importance of research and cross checking facts. He said that questions of ethics were incomplete without the involvement of the management. Local mediapersons and OIL officials actively participated in the interactions that followed the speeches of the resource persons. source: the sentinel assam

Sensex nudges 9000 as weakness persists

MUMBAI: Indian equities fell sharply for a second consecutive session Tuesday, wiping out the gains recorded in the five-day run ahead of the interim budget. But with vote-on-account offering little to corporate India, the across-the-board selloff sparked Monday spilled over to today as well. Global markets were also under pressure on account of renewed financial concerns, which further affected sentiment.

Another worry is a likely downgrade of India's sovereign by rating agencies over the government’s deteriorating finances. In the interim budget, acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee revised the Centre's fiscal deficit to 6 per cent of GDP for the current fiscal against earlier projection of 2.5 per cent.

Standard & Poor's has said it would monitor fiscal deficit among other factors to review India's sovereign ratings which currently stands at the lowest investment grade. If India's rating is downgraded, it will significantly raise the cost of borrowing for Indian firms in global markets.

At close today, National Stock Exchange's Nifty was at 2770.50, down 78 points or 2.74 per cent. The broader index recovered from an intra-day low of 2757.30. Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex ended at 9,035, down 270.45 points or 2.91 per cent. The index broke the crucial support of 9000 to hit an intra-day low of 8994.34 but crawled back as some buying emerged at lower levels.

"The market is moving sideways in a narrow range of 2750-2950 (on Nifty) for the past few sessions. The index needs to successfully break out on either side for a decisive trend. The global trend continues to be negative and the Dow has breached its crucial support of 8000. With the budget now out of the way, the Indian market will have to rely on the global markets. However, there are no positive signals emerging overseas and some more pain is likely," said Neera Jain, chief technical analyst, CRNIndia.com.

Significant losses in Tata Steel (-6.74%), ICICI Bank (-5.69%), DLF (-5.19%), Mahindra & Mahindra (-5.01%) and Hindalco Industries (-4.74%) dragged the key indices lower. ITC, which ended with fractional gains, was the lone gainer in the 30-share index.

There was no respite for the midcap space either. The broad-based selloff shaved 2.31 per cent off the BSE Midcap Index and 2.35 per cent from the BSE Smallcap Index.

Sectorwise, realty was the worst hit, followed by consumer durables, banking and the metal space. Market breadth on BSE remained extremely weak through the day with 1,722 declines outnumbering 682 advances.

Meanwhile, world stocks fell to a two-week low as concerns about economy and corporate profits intensified. Among European markets, the FTSE 100 lost 1.49 per cent, DAX 30 fell 1.49 per cent and CAC 40 was down 1.76 per cent. In the Asia-Pacific, the Nikkei dropped 1.5 per cent, Hang Seng tumbled 3.79 per cent, Straits Times declined 2.5 per cent and S&P/ASX was down 1.5 per cent.

Soruce: http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com